Valid Points include the belts, the foundries at Sabrontir, the inner giant (scouting), the elevator - Which includes a cantina, several dining places, a 'mall', and residential quarters at this time, in addition to the construction zones and administration areas (Some of which are locked off to general access.)

Reputedly, there is a pirate cove at GG2. PCs who wish to be peaceful with that faction may choose to start there as well.

Questions as needed, and if you want a given description of an area (AKA, not in your ship), ask, and I'll give you the gist, or you may let me know where you want to be, and I can set a scene there for you.

If you have not yet caught up to me and discussed your ship, assume that you are in what is essentially a light civilian craft - Your ships are capable of defending themselves, and even going on the attack, but they are not dedicated military craft. They are a privateer's ship.

Because of advances in particulate science, it is possible to send a much-faster-than-light message. What this means is that radio lag over the radio across a star system is seconds, rather than hours. Interstellar communication takes tight-beam routers and several hours at best, and may require routing around interposing obstacles, such as nebulae. Your ships have the FTL equivalent of CBs. And yes, FM radios, though they don't bother to broadcast that on FTL.

Ship AIs are just complex enough to run the routine operations of ship on their own, accept your vocal input, and plot 'safe' navigational courses. They may have voice output, but are not capable of actually carrying on an intelligent conversation, though some bored pilots put a modified ELSA or Racter on their ship. This is never good for anyone.

I wonder, Siren, how big does a ship have to be to take a Yau-Calabi drive (I know none of us have any) but in term of the different sizes in the game. What would be 'big', 'medium', and 'small' freighters in term of size?

Logged

"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away."-Philip K. Dick

Physically, any ship can, technically, mount a Yau-Calabi drive. They merely -mass- about twice as much as most fighter designs, which are about on scale with a modern fighter, just a bit more three dimensional to mount all the reaction mass they need. A fighter which mounts a Y-C drive will see its ability to accelerate and maneuver plummet, a minimum of three-fold. Probably more, because of the reaction engine redesign requirements.

If your ship is big enough to be made to haul stuff, then it /should/ be designed to mount a hyperspace drive. There is no (game) mechanical reason, to start without one. There's not that much money in the short haul business.

This is chosen for a game mechanic reason.

A 'light' freighter is enough to carry 2-4 isotainers. A 'Medium' carries a small to significant amount more. A 'Heavy' might be measured in cubic kilometers.

Not exactly. A given engine produces a given -volume- of hyperspace. Bubbles can merge in flight, but a ship is otherwise incommunicado in hyperspace. Very, very large ships may have multiple engines. (Starseeders, Dreadnoughts, and their ilk.)

Echo, you are far enough out to detect the radio signal the larger ship is putting out, about four hours after you jettison and drift. You are about a day's travel from the elevator, and about 8 hours out from the transmitting ship. It is a repeating signal, but matches no known encoding, save a vague similarity to morse code, and your ships computers are spitting out '-,.' as a translation from morse.

"I grab the sword!""Mmkay, you're dead.""What!?""You just grabbed the sword of the god you were just personally responsible for banishing from the world for the next ten thousand years. You just got zapped by around a billion volts of Angry Divine Power. You're dead."

Seriously. If we can commandeer that ship, and at least partially repair it, we would have one heck of a base to use. I'm almost certain it'll have a FTL drive too, so if we can figure out a way to latch our ships onto it (or get them into it), we'll be set.

All of us who have freighters should have Y-C drives, I believe. I'm pretty sure *I* do, at the least.

Salvaging, however, seems like a good idea, provided there's nothing that want to kill us all aboard it.

First, though, we actually need to end up together and agreeable about it.

Logged

"I grab the sword!""Mmkay, you're dead.""What!?""You just grabbed the sword of the god you were just personally responsible for banishing from the world for the next ten thousand years. You just got zapped by around a billion volts of Angry Divine Power. You're dead."

Y-C drives aside (my freighter doesn't have one, for RP reasons), just having the ship as a base of operations would be nice.

Siren: are there any applicable salvage laws that we need to know about?

As a general class: Starship salvage of an obvious derelict requires that the appropriate black-box information be submitted to the government. Legally, the proper owners have 30 days to stake a claim to their material, after which it is presumed abandoned. Alien technology, which is rare, but known, is of murkier legal status, but generally boils down to the old maxim of possession being nine-tenths of the law.

I'm sure that more often than the government bodies would like to admit, salvage claims amount to "Ship? What ship? We didn't see any derelict ships. But since you're here, would you like to buy some of this high-grade metal we found in the asteroid belt?"

Logged

"I grab the sword!""Mmkay, you're dead.""What!?""You just grabbed the sword of the god you were just personally responsible for banishing from the world for the next ten thousand years. You just got zapped by around a billion volts of Angry Divine Power. You're dead."